angton Hall, Lincoln, of
whose virtue and learning he delighted to talk in very exalted terms; and
poor Dr. Lawrence had long been his friend and confident. The
conversation I saw them hold together in Essex Street one day, in the
year 1781 or 1782, was a melancholy one, and made a singular impression
on my mind. He was himself exceedingly ill, and I accompanied him
thither for advice. The physician was, however, in some respects more to
be pitied than the patient. Johnson was panting under an asthma and
dropsy, but Lawrence had been brought home that very morning struck with
the palsy, from which he had, two hours before we came, strove to awaken
himself by blisters. They were both deaf, and scarce able to speak
besides: one from difficulty of breathing, the other from paralytic
debility. To give and receive medical counsel, therefore, they fairly
sat down on each side a table in the doctor's gloomy apartment, adorned
with skeletons, preserved monsters, etc., and agreed to write Latin
billets to each other. Such a scene did I never see. "You," said
Johnson, "are timide and gelide," finding that his friend had prescribed
palliative, not drastic, remedies. "It is not _me_," replies poor
Lawrence, in an interrupted voice, "'tis nature that is gelide and
timide." In fact, he lived but few months after, I believe, and retained
his faculties still a shorter time. He was a man of strict piety and
profound learning, but little skilled in the knowledge of life or
manners, and died without having ever enjoyed the reputation he so justly
deserved.

Mr. Johnson's health had been always extremely bad since I first knew
him, and his over-anxious care to retain without blemish the perfect
sanity of his mind contributed much to disturb it. He had studied
medicine diligently in all its branches, but had given particular
attention to the diseases of the imagination, which he watched in himself
with a solicitude destructive of his own peace, and intolerable to those
he trusted. Dr. Lawrence told him one day that if he would come and beat
him once a week he would bear it, but to hear his complaints was more
than _man_ could support. 'Twas therefore that he tried, I suppose, and
in eighteen years contrived to weary the patience of a _woman_. When Mr.
Johnson felt his fancy, or fancied he felt it, disordered, his constant
recurrence was to the study of arithmetic, and one day that he was
totally confined to his chamber, and I